food museum blog

Bean-Fed Fish

The U.S. has evidently signed a major contract with the Chinese who will purchase $3 billion worth of soybeans from American farmers, with more purchases to come.  As the soybean is one of the few beans that is NOT native to the US, this may sound implausible. But one of  the biggest Chinese food businesses is now aquaculture--feeding fish stocks to fish being farm raised is getting too expensive, and fish stocks are being rapidly depleted--so aqua growers are substituting soy protein for the food that comes naturally to most fish--other fish.

Does anyone know what this will mean for the fish, or for those who eat them?

( Logo is from the combined American Soybean Association and the United Soybean Board--for further info click on this: http://www.soyaqua.org/quickfacts.html)

Want to Know You're Eating Dolly?

The California Legislature is attempting to pass a bill that would require labeling of any foods produced from cloned animals or their offspring. According to the April 17 AP story, the U.S.  Food and Drug Administration apparently is ready to approve such products for sale without labeling, though a bill pending in Congress could require it.

"According to research by Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, the FDA has based its preliminary findings on limited samples, said Jean Halloran, the group's director of food policy initiatives. Findings that cloned pork could be safe, for example, were based on tests of just five pigs, while the findings about cows' milk were from 43 cows.

"Considering that 90 percent of cloned animals die because there's something wrong with them, we don't consider that to be an adequate safety assessment of what millions of people would be eating and drinking from millions of different animals," Halloran said."

Don't want to put you off your feed, but for further info from the FDA, go here.

Put A Chicken/Pig/Cow In Your Tank

While we're on the subject of liquid alternative fuels, at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago yesterday, Tyson Foods Inc. chief Richard Bond said his company is developing fat-based fuels for use in jet engines or diesel engines.

According to the Reuters report, "The largest U.S. meat company, which produces 2.3 billion pounds of fat a year as a byproduct of its operations, could potentially start production of the fuel by the end of the year, Bond said."

The notion of pouring fuel derived from the fat of  dead animals into our tanks may be be slightly less enticing than that of using the lightly citrus-scented ( !) fuel blogged about yesterday here...But hey, it's all renewable and that's great.

p.s. An expert I spoke with recently said that if all the money poured into Iraq had been put into developing alternatives fuels, the foreign-oil dependency problem would be solved by now.

(As for the Reuters Food Summit that ran from March 5-8,  even after viewing the company video purporting to answer the question "What Are Summits? " we are not exactly sure...)

Musing on Velveeta

Apparently, eastern New Mexico is home to one of the largest factory co-op dairy operations in the States, turning out blocks of rubber cheese similar to Velveeta, and other products. It's called Southwest Cheese Company, ( sounds almost quaint,  with wooden hand churns and Daisy chewing her cud and peering through the window,)  and it's  in Clovis.  It supposedly produces over 250 million pounds of "American cheese." 

Back in the ancient days of my childhood, Velveeta was eaten in other homes, not ours. So when I was at a friend's place, I occasionally stuck my fingers in the Velveeta, amazed at its un-cheeselike consistency and its almost melted-before-melting quality.

A quick Google of Velveeta reveals that in 1928 Kraft Foods itself described V as not quite cheese. This text is taken from the company website.

" After several years of research on the nutri tive value of whey - a by - product of cheese making - Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corporation introduces Velveeta© pasteurized process cheese food in the United States and Canada in a half-pound package."

It's a "cheese food." Huh?

Back in February of 2000 Steve Ritter was wondering the same thing--he had been musing on Cheez ( Why Johnny Can't Spell) Whiz, another Kraft product. Here's what he found out, after trial and error:

"Pasteurized process cheese, for example, is made from one or more cheeses, such as cheddar or colby, and may have cream or anhydrous milkfat added. The cheese is blended and heated with an emulsifier—typically a sodium or potassium phosphate, tartrate, or citrate—and other optional ingredients such as water, salt, artificial color, and spices or other flavorings.

Pasteurized process cheese food is a variation of process cheese that may have dry milk, whey solids, or anhydrous milkfat added, which reduces the amount of cheese in the finished product. It must contain at least 51% of the cheese ingredient by weight, have a moisture content less than 44%, and have at least 23% milkfat."

So cheese food is something edible, and contains at least half of what it purports to be.

I won't go into the whole feedlot, cows jowl to jowl who never see pasture, old milkers get axed and are shipped to McDonald's thing here. You know all that anyway.

(SW Cheese factory pic from www.southwestcheese.com. Velveeta pic from http://www.kraftfoods.com/Velveeta/Timeline)

"Raising Chickens" Exhibit: Visitor Comments

"Raising Chickens: Then and Now" Exhibit

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